R&R Contracting Utilities got in the door with a WBE certification. It grew by becoming the crew that general contractors can’t do without.

Jennifer DiPietro began her utility company with $30 and a problem she had no way to solve on paper. The Small Business Administration wouldn’t lend to a business with no track record, and her credit cards couldn’t cover the first job. So she went to a general contractor, asked for an advance against the work, and promised she wouldn’t need one again once the profit came in. That is how R&R Contracting Utilities got its start, more than 30 years ago.

“I didn’t think I could fail,” she says. “You look at a brick wall, and you don’t see bricks there; you see a road ahead.” When she opened the company, she read every construction report, sat in on every meeting, and visited every municipality she could reach, and she says the whole strategy came down to networking and asking questions of people who had already succeeded.

Today R&R serves general contractors across the Mid-Atlantic, and it has just unveiled a new brand identity built around two clearly defined practices: Workforce Solutions, which places certified crews inside a contractor’s project, and Traffic Control & Flagging, which manages a work zone from setup to finish. The change looks like a visual refresh, but it marks something bigger. It is the point where a certified firm decided its certification was the starting line and not the finish.

The Certificate Opened the Door

DiPietro, president and founder, is candid about why general contractors first called. They brought R&R onto their contracts because it held a WBE certification, and for a while that was the whole relationship. The firm filled a participation requirement, supplied crews on a time-and-materials basis, and stayed in that lane.

What changed the relationship was how R&R behaved once it arrived. Her crews came with OSHA certifications, training records, and the paperwork to back all of it up. Her minority certification was never challenged because the files were always current. She answered when contractors called, and she gave them what they asked for without a fight. Over time the contractors stopped seeing a certification and started seeing a partner who could be trusted with real work, and that shift in perception did more for the business than the certificate ever could.

Why Certification Alone Can’t Carry a Business

DiPietro sees a common mistake among newly certified owners who assume the paperwork will bring in work on its own. “They don’t realize that there are a thousand of us,” she says, estimating that more than 1,000 certified WBE and MBE firms compete in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia region. Her comparison is a plain one: “The certification is like having a degree, and now you have to use it.”

Using it means attending pre-bid and pre-qualification meetings, showing up at bid openings, studying which contractors are bidding which jobs, and then calling each of them directly. Much of this now happens over Zoom, which makes it easier to do and easier to skip.

The ground under certification is also moving. In October 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an interim final rule that removed race- and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage from DBE eligibility and now requires firm owners to provide individualized evidence of both. State agencies that handle certification have been directed to reevaluate existing DBEs, and some firms have had to wait for recertification before they count toward contract goals. Whatever a firm thinks of those changes, they carry a lesson: a business that depends entirely on one credential is exposed when the rules around that credential shift, while a business known for delivery keeps its value.

The Lunch That Changed R&R

The turning point for DiPietro came at a lunch. A general contractor told DiPietro and her son Richie, R&R’s vice president, that he couldn’t find anyone reliable, someone who followed through in the field and also kept up with the paperwork that comes with public work. He asked whether R&R would try traffic control.

DiPietro says “yes” to requests like that, even when they fall outside her usual work, and then she goes home and writes a proposal. The contractor read the proposal and agreed to give her a chance. She credits the minority programs for the patience that followed, saying they “hold our hand until we get it right.”

R&R now handles traffic control setup, night lighting, and related work. It has added sediment control, for which DiPietro already held a certification, and its crews lay stabilizing mats at the end of jobs for Allan Myers, a large contractor. The pattern she describes is consistent across her clients, who want time-and-materials crews to fill gaps and also want turnkey services where their own capacity runs short. The numbers moved with that demand. Revenue climbed from $10 million a year to $12 million, and the company is now aiming for $20 million, a target she says would have been out of reach before.

Two Practices, One Clear Promise

The new brand puts that growth into language a busy contractor can absorb quickly. Workforce Solutions tells a general contractor that R&R can supply the people, and Traffic Control & Flagging tells them R&R can take an entire piece of the job off their plate. Underneath both is the same promise of reliability, which is what the contractor at that lunch said he couldn’t find.

Clear service lines help the company as much as its customers. A contractor knows exactly what to ask for, and R&R can decide what to hire for and where to grow. Employees can also see a path forward, which matters to DiPietro. Some of her workers have become foremen and superintendents, and she names that growth as one of the company’s most important goals.

Growing Up Means Letting Go

DiPietro says the hardest part of scaling was mental. “It’s getting out of my head that I’m not a mom-and-pop anymore,” she says. Richie pushed her toward that recognition, telling her the foundation was strong, but the company had to expand. She then hired the people a larger company needs, bringing on a chief operating officer, Reed Porter, along with an estimator, a human resources lead, six to eight administrative staff, and a recruiter who focuses only on field hiring.

The payoff is timing. In the past, DiPietro says, the team had to be built after a job was won, and now the company is ready before the work arrives. She adds that this level of growth requires trusting people and giving up control. R&R uses the Entrepreneurial Operating System, known as EOS, which has managers meet weekly to set goals, name their problems, and resolve them by the next meeting.

The Value Behind the Value

The deepest strength at R&R may be the one that shows up on no service list. DiPietro’s first client from 1994 still works with her, and so does her first crew. She visits job sites herself and brings water or Gatorade, and she asks each worker what would make the job better. She pays fair wages without haggling, and she is firm about why. “Share with your people who make you successful,” she says. “They’re successful, you’ll be successful.”

Some of those workers started at 20 and now own homes, with children in college. All five of DiPietro’s own children have worked at R&R, and each now runs a business of their own. A competitor can copy a price, but it is much harder to copy 30 years of loyalty in both directions.

What Other Minority- and Women-Owned Firms Can Learn

R&R’s story suggests that certified firms should treat a certification as the reason for a first conversation, and delivery as the reason for every conversation after it. General contractors reveal their gaps through the requests they make, and each request is a clue to the next service a firm could offer. DiPietro advises saying “yes” and following with a real proposal, keeping every compliance file current, and going to the meetings, since relationships are still built in person or on camera. She also encourages newcomers to be direct, use every resource available, and call potential customers. Her reminder to anyone who is nervous is that you already started from zero, so there is little to be afraid of.

Valuable Because of the Badge, or Valuable Without It

Every certified contractor eventually faces the same tension. A firm can be valuable because of its certification, or it can be valuable regardless of it, and only the second kind of value belongs entirely to the business. R&R still uses its WBE certification and is grateful for the support that came with it. But DiPietro built a company that a general contractor would want to hire even if the certificate disappeared tomorrow. The badge can open the door, and what a firm does after walking through it decides whether the door stays open.